Present Shock - Douglass Rushkoff

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Enki
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Present Shock - Douglass Rushkoff

Post by Enki »

http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosn ... the-world/
What does this mean? Rushkoff breaks up “presentism” into five symptoms or challenges and matches each with constructive solutions for pressing the pause button. The “aha-moment-per-page ratio in Present Shock is high. Once you identify these concepts for yourself, you will start to see them everywhere.

Narrative Collapse: Rushkoff identifies both the sensationalism of reality TV and the meta-stories of The Simpsons and Family Guy as examples of how we no longer have the time or patience for linear stories. From entertainment to financial investment, the payoff has to be virtually instantaneous in order to justify our attention. Politically, he shows how these impulses play out both in the Tea Party and the Occupy movement. A news cycle divested of linear time, pushes politicians into present tense reactions with unsustainable results. Rushkoff’s sympathies are clearly more with Occupy who confounded conservatives and the mainstream press by having a large impact without an easily identifiable goal. In remix culture and contemporary activism, he sees the potential for us to seize the narrative frame and use them in new ways to invent innovative story forms and flexible agendas.
Digiphrenia: Because technology enables us to be aware of and have control over multiple conceptual spaces simultaneously, our attention is increasingly divided. Whether we are “multi-tasking” at work or piloting drone strikes in Afghanistan from a suburban office park in Las Vegas, we are not in the present moment (in a zen sense) but actually in fragments between moments that happen to be occurring at the same time. The key to avoiding these dislocation, Rushkoff suggests, is to understand the difference between time as data flow (like a Twitter feed) and time as data storage (like a book.) Knowing when to be in “the now,” and when to insulate yourself from it can help you reclaim control of your time and attention.
Overwinding: The “shock” part of future shock really comes from how much time we have “springloaded” into the present. From financial derivatives to the piracy of intellectual property, Rushkoff shows how we use leverage “to squish huge timescales into much smaller ones,” attempting to capture the value of (others’) labor in the click of a mouse. This is why Black Friday gets earlier and earlier each year or why shaving a couple of milliseconds off the time to execute a computerized trade confers significant advantage. But we can also use this fact in more constructive ways to “springload” time into things, like the example Rushkoff cites of the fully functional “pop-up” hospital that Israel sent to Japan after the Tsunami.
Fractalnoia: One of the biggest risks in the barrage of big data spawned by our digital lives is that our abilities of pattern recognition are imprecise. When we succeed at making sense of the world in one scale or time frame we easily apply that “fractal” pattern elsewhere, often inappropriately. As the pace of change increases, our feedback loops get shorter and shorter until all we have is feedback screech. Computers, operating out of human time, can in fact discern patterns in that noise, but it is up to us humans to put those patterns in the correct context. When we fudge the hierarchy we end up with conspiracy theories and unsupportable science.
Apocalypto: The time pressures are so great and our confidence in our own ability to solve the world’s problems so weak that apocalyptic finality has an unshakable appeal. Rushkoff links together not only “Preppers” in their bunkers and cryogenic “Singularity-ists,” but also the current cultural fascination with zombies as examples of our wish to “level up” (in game parlance) out of our present situation. These grand finales are fantasies, like the doomsday predictions about the end of the Mayan calendar, but they speak to a powerful yearning. Rushkoff suggest we resist these temptations and instead, “let up on the pedal just a bit… [and] envision slow paths to sustainability that don’t require zombies or the demise of the majority of the world’s population.
Other than Narrative Collapse I agree with him. I think Long-form narrative is more important and more prevalent in our society than it was in the past. If he's going to use TV as his example, then his example is terrible. There are more long-form narrative dramas currently running on television than there were in any decade before 1990. Stories that take years to play out have the highest rating. He has to ignore the Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, Sons of Anarchy, the Shield, and hundreds of other shows to make his point about The Family Guy and Reality TV.
Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.
-Alexander Hamilton
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monster_gardener
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Location: Trolla. Land of upside down trees and tomatos........

A Novela Idea.......

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Enki wrote:http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosn ... the-world/
What does this mean? Rushkoff breaks up “presentism” into five symptoms or challenges and matches each with constructive solutions for pressing the pause button. The “aha-moment-per-page ratio in Present Shock is high. Once you identify these concepts for yourself, you will start to see them everywhere.

Narrative Collapse: Rushkoff identifies both the sensationalism of reality TV and the meta-stories of The Simpsons and Family Guy as examples of how we no longer have the time or patience for linear stories. From entertainment to financial investment, the payoff has to be virtually instantaneous in order to justify our attention. Politically, he shows how these impulses play out both in the Tea Party and the Occupy movement. A news cycle divested of linear time, pushes politicians into present tense reactions with unsustainable results. Rushkoff’s sympathies are clearly more with Occupy who confounded conservatives and the mainstream press by having a large impact without an easily identifiable goal. In remix culture and contemporary activism, he sees the potential for us to seize the narrative frame and use them in new ways to invent innovative story forms and flexible agendas.
Digiphrenia: Because technology enables us to be aware of and have control over multiple conceptual spaces simultaneously, our attention is increasingly divided. Whether we are “multi-tasking” at work or piloting drone strikes in Afghanistan from a suburban office park in Las Vegas, we are not in the present moment (in a zen sense) but actually in fragments between moments that happen to be occurring at the same time. The key to avoiding these dislocation, Rushkoff suggests, is to understand the difference between time as data flow (like a Twitter feed) and time as data storage (like a book.) Knowing when to be in “the now,” and when to insulate yourself from it can help you reclaim control of your time and attention.
Overwinding: The “shock” part of future shock really comes from how much time we have “springloaded” into the present. From financial derivatives to the piracy of intellectual property, Rushkoff shows how we use leverage “to squish huge timescales into much smaller ones,” attempting to capture the value of (others’) labor in the click of a mouse. This is why Black Friday gets earlier and earlier each year or why shaving a couple of milliseconds off the time to execute a computerized trade confers significant advantage. But we can also use this fact in more constructive ways to “springload” time into things, like the example Rushkoff cites of the fully functional “pop-up” hospital that Israel sent to Japan after the Tsunami.
Fractalnoia: One of the biggest risks in the barrage of big data spawned by our digital lives is that our abilities of pattern recognition are imprecise. When we succeed at making sense of the world in one scale or time frame we easily apply that “fractal” pattern elsewhere, often inappropriately. As the pace of change increases, our feedback loops get shorter and shorter until all we have is feedback screech. Computers, operating out of human time, can in fact discern patterns in that noise, but it is up to us humans to put those patterns in the correct context. When we fudge the hierarchy we end up with conspiracy theories and unsupportable science.
Apocalypto: The time pressures are so great and our confidence in our own ability to solve the world’s problems so weak that apocalyptic finality has an unshakable appeal. Rushkoff links together not only “Preppers” in their bunkers and cryogenic “Singularity-ists,” but also the current cultural fascination with zombies as examples of our wish to “level up” (in game parlance) out of our present situation. These grand finales are fantasies, like the doomsday predictions about the end of the Mayan calendar, but they speak to a powerful yearning. Rushkoff suggest we resist these temptations and instead, “let up on the pedal just a bit… [and] envision slow paths to sustainability that don’t require zombies or the demise of the majority of the world’s population.
Other than Narrative Collapse I agree with him. I think Long-form narrative is more important and more prevalent in our society than it was in the past. If he's going to use TV as his example, then his example is terrible. There are more long-form narrative dramas currently running on television than there were in any decade before 1990. Stories that take years to play out have the highest rating. He has to ignore the Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, Sons of Anarchy, the Shield, and hundreds of other shows to make his point about The Family Guy and Reality TV.
Thank You VERY Much for your post, Tinker......
There are more long-form narrative dramas currently running on television than there were in any decade before 1990. Stories that take years to play out have the highest rating. He has to ignore the Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, Sons of Anarchy, the Shield, and hundreds of other shows to make his point about The Family Guy and Reality TV.
You may well be right........

My guess is that none of his favorite family members watches Soap Operas ;) .......... or Novelas ;) ;) .........
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Enki
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Re: Present Shock - Douglass Rushkoff

Post by Enki »

In my experience in and around New York's marketing culture, long-term narrative building is far more of a concern today than ever before. I know people making their careers building long-term narratives. Which I think plays into the idea, in that we crave deep narratives. I just think that the accepted wisdom that we have shorter attention spans now, is bullshit.
Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.
-Alexander Hamilton
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